讀後感想 7. Remapping East Asia: The Construction of a Region    Edited by T.J. Pempel   Cornell University   2005

This book was what I found in a bookstore next to our computer centre in University of Bristol. It is very important for me because of its alluring title made the born of my thesis topic. A newly established centre of East Asian Studies in Bristol had drawn my attention as I went back for graduation ceremony. A research fellow Weipin in Historical studies suggested that it might be a good idea to meet Professor Mok for my further study in the university. He was the director of the East Asian Studies in that year. It seems Europeans have crush on China stuff and this phenomena come with widely established East Asian or Chinese Studies over the whole British academic institutions.

At the moment I glimpse the book, I understand why. And that was 2006 spring.

This week, I reread the book in a patient way. It is good to write summary for each chapter which bring me a clear picture of the whole context. Basically, the book talks about the emerging concept of East Asia as a region. How this concept originated and what is the future of this forming region.

When talking about development of a region, there are two clues that we should notice: one is bottom-up process which called regionalization; the other is top-down process which called regionalism. Regionalization is mainly led by economic driving force and regionalism is no doubt influenced by government policy.

In this book, scholars very often compared the development of East Asia as a region to Europe. They said East Asia as a region is very unique case. Owing to historical background, the nations in this region are less likely to set up formal regional institutions. Nationalism is still emphasized by the governments more than regionalism.

However, cross-border trade and investment have accelerated the pace of regionalization. Economic activities have brought not only flow capital but also human resources. Thus one country’s lifestyle has been transplanted to another. I am specifically interested in the widely spread popular culture in this region which many times mentioned by scholars.

In my thesis, I managed to test the theory of regionalization by using the case of Taiwanese social life in Shanghai. Nevertheless, now I found the theory is obviously not enough to explain this case. Someone suggested that the forming popular culture of East Asia actually can not be denied which have absorbed a certain degree of Western culture. Thus, the process of regionalization can not be separated from the globalization. Both lead the way to the development of East Asia.

Here I would like to argue that neither only globalization nor regionalization can give popular cultural spread in East Asia a good explanation. I suggest that a few economic and technological led countries in this region actually assume characters as medium to crash, accept, and then transform the Western culture to what is more easily accepted by the rest nations. This process, of course, naturally comprises globalization and regionalization. My goal is to examine the popular cultural and lifestyle transformation in Shanghai by the influence of Taiwanese immigration under the mix power of globalization and regionalization, and through the aspects of consumer behavior and leisure activity.

As some scholars said that growing number of middle class in East Asia can be an indicator for understanding the changing lifestyle of people in this region, I would like to say that Taiwanese in Shanghai is exactly a good model of high-income and well-educated middle class group.

Thanks those papers edited by Pempel gives me new idea of my thesis. Regionalization is a good path for East Asia. At least we have built our trans-national production system which brings us a more prosperous life. Although formal and institutionalized regional organizations remain not easy to be a powerful driving force for regionalism, East Asia has already walked further to be an influential region in a continuous globalised world.

It is a different thing from EU. East Asia as a region is a fluid concept without clear border line. This region will be kept remapping according to different definition. The most important thing is that successful economic integration will continue to keep the world’s eye on East Asia.